Ready, Willing and Able? An Investigation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour in Help-Seeking for a Community Sample with Current Untreated Depressive Symptoms.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Tomczyk, S. Schomerus, G. Stolzenburg, S. Muehlan, H. Schmidt, S.
Abstract	Applying health behaviour change models, such as the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), to help-seeking for mental health problems can address the deficit in health care utilisation. However, previous studies largely focused on help-seeking intentions and not behaviour, which might be problematic due to the intention-behaviour gap. Hence, TPB and help-seeking were examined in a German community sample with current untreated depressive symptoms: 188 adults (Mage = 50.34; SD = 16.19; 70.7% female) participated in a baseline interview and survey measuring components of the TPB (attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control) and help-seeking intentions. They reported actual help-seeking from mental health professionals via telephone surveys 3 and 6 months later. To better understand the potential gap between help-seeking intentions and behaviour and to investigate the contributions of readiness, willingness and ability to seek help, two path models were constructed in accordance with the TPB controlling for covariates. Attitudes (β = .24), subjective norms (β = .25) and self-efficacy (β = .15) were significantly associated with intentions (R2 = 26%), which predicted help-seeking (Cox and Snell’s pseudo-R2 = 23%); controllability did not predict help-seeking. In sum, the TPB provides a reliable framework to explore help-seeking behaviour for mental health problems. Based on these findings, prevention efforts should focus on readiness and willingness to seek help (e.g. foster positive attitudes and social support of treatment). However, the role of ability, operationalised as perceived behavioural control and (perceived) barriers to help-seeking, warrants further research, as self-efficacy but not controllability was associated with help-seeking.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11121-020-01099-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7366606&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	13894986
Journal	Prevention Science [Prev Sci]
Volume Number	21
DOI	10.1007/s11121-020-01099-2
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7366606
Issue Number	6
PubMed reference number	32140825
e-ISSN	15736695
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2020-08-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2020
Subject Keyword	Help-seeking Theory of planned behaviour Depression Mental health General population
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health